Storm Henk certainly brought home the feeling of being cut off from the world when the power goes out. Quite honestly I have been in a worse area when considering the number of power cuts. That was in an area of new housing development where if it was not a builder putting a pick through a cable then it was a blackout to connect another new build area to the grid. All in all over the the time it took to get the power up was quite impressive. The thing with that area was that the disruption was going to end as the housing development completed. That was indeed the case, thankfully, and the frequency of power cuts went to zero. The problem here is that everything of a service nature powerlines, telephone cables goes above ground and with a storm like Henk, with reported gusts in excess of 50 mph, you are going to get cables meeting the ground. The Henk outage must have been the longest for some time. So where did it leave us.
Candles and torches for light. Note to self: check the batteries of the torches at more regular intervals. A camping gas stove provides a gas ring to heat water for tea or coffee. You could even cook soup on it but I think it falls short of cooking a Sunday roast. The central heating refuses to work, a) there is no pilot light but mains electric ignition, b) it has an electric pump, c) there is no power to drive the wifi receiver that the room thermostat tells that heat is required. You always have the log burner or open fire to toast your chilblains until it is time to duck under the eiderdown for a full eight hours or until the power comes back on.
What cannot be replicated or made up for is all the comms equipment that ducks out when the power is off. Before the advent of the wireless telephone that plug into the mains you had the phone where the appropriate power came via the phone line. Now the world has moved to wireless phones if the power goes so does the ability to make a call. “Don’t worry you have your mobile phone”. They don’t work in this village except for a few locations and those are very suspect when it comes to quality and consistency of signal. It is very likely that if you do get a signal it will cut out after minutes or even seconds.
We have banged on about the lack of a mobile signal in this village but the full impact is felt when the electricity goes off. When you have no mobile signal, normally your provider will allow you to make calls over your internet, although not all the providers give this support. This is called WiFi calling although I think it is more akin to internet calling because the call is routed via you router although the connection to the router is via WiFi. And what happens when the power goes, your router goes off line and so does your WiFi calling. For us and many of the people in this village that breaks any form of communication with the outside world. Emergency calls are not possible with your mobile.
Fortunately we do have a working phone box which we tested and yes it does work during a power cut, but that is in its current analogue state. A lot has been said about the removal of old infrequently used phone boxes and ours is one of those which would fall into this category. Never fear Ofcom have stepped in and have said that they will not allow removal of a phone box where it is in a place without coverage from all four mobile network providers. That is Shottisham. Yes we know that there are certain areas of the village where a mobile signal is available. One I understand it by the church although I have never tried this with my provider’s signal. These areas are few and far between and when you get a signal it is scrappy and will cut out on you. So the Shottisham phone box will be saved although I am not sure if this needs an intervention from the village. Need to keep an eye on that one. The Ofcom page is reached by the following;
https://ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2022/stronger-protections-for-essential-phone-boxes
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The problem with the new digital network, due to be live in 2025, next year!, is that you need a router to make it work or so we understand. Routers need power so if you have a power cut no phone and that includes the saved phone box. I am feeling even more cut off than now. Perhaps I will look into battery powered routers and switch to it when the power goes out.
Shottisham Blog 